Larchmont— This time, the teardown property is 15 Thompson Place, a relatively modest home with a footprint of 2377 sq ft on a lot of about 0.25 acre.
A developer plans to increase the footprint by 96%.
Village of Larchmont Board of Trustees is scheduled to announce its decision April 8 at 10:30 am at a Special Meeting.
On March 9, 15 Thompson Place Realty LLC submitted an application to the Board for relief from Local Law 1-2016, “A Temporary Moratorium of Certain Land Use Applications that are Pending or may be Subsequently Filed with the Village of Larchmont.”
The applicant attests the Moratorium results in an “unnecessary hardship” on the subject property.
The applicant is proposing to demolish the existing single-family residence in order to construct a new single-family residence with a footprint of 2,377 square feet (a 96% increase in footprint size), as depicted on the plans submitted to the Village.
The proposal would also result in a 64% increase in lot coverage (965 square feet) and a 58% increase in impervious surface area (1,589 square feet).
A similar appeal to demolish the iconic Larchmont Manor home at 40 Ocean Ave. to construct four single family residences was denied by the Board last month.
This is getting a little ridiculous. The current house looks bad, is in worse shape and is not a fit within the neighborhood. The proposed house is nice, appropriately sized, complies with zoning, and provides benefits to the immediate neighbors in beautification and the village/town in incremental taxes. We should be protesting the DENIAL of this request – to lump a project like this in with projects like Ocean Ave is laughable.
Our property values, sense of community and overall neighborhood attractiveness all suffer when the village, town and misguided citizens impose barriers and undue hardship on those who take significant financial risks to improve / revitalize our housing stock in compliance with the zoning laws.
Yes, Thompson place is in the Manor. I support Preserve Larchmont. I am living with the ridiculous amount of allowance the village building department/architectural board grants homeowners. Both neighbors have done work (in the Manor), against village code, and a simple ‘Oh, you didn’t mean to do it? Okay then ,no problem” was granted by the village. They are far to lenient on allowing homeowners to do what they want with the property, with little regard for the impact it has to the immediate area (more home, less green and higher homes, with no views left). Just because someone buys a house and HOPES to rebuild and sell for a killer profit does not mean they should so spare me the yap yap yaping about that poor soul who can’t make a ton of money now.
Looks like a nice new house, taller than the existing ranch but only 4-bedrooms, built with some good details and complies with zoning. What’s the problem here?
And changing the zoning to 1-acre lots to prevent subdivisions is tantamount to theft. What if you bought a house on large property, paid extra for that, and thought that maybe someday you might have the money to split the lot to make 2 homes. Or sell it tom someon who might do that, to fund your retirement. Now, with a stork of a pen, the extra value you paid for disappears? Create appropriate zoning and let complying projects proceed. Period.
Otherwise, just admit it: your motto is: will the last one in please lock the door behind them.
This house sold for $750k last year. And it’s horrifically ugly. In it’s place will be a nice looking, 4,100 sf home on a .25 acre lot (which is totally in character for the manor) that will likely sell for $2-2.5m. So you’ve replaced an eyesore, raised the property value of everyone around it and generated what is likely another $30-40k of tax revenue for the district (without raising anyone else’s taxes a dime). Unless you are a neighbor who just doesn’t want to be annoyed by construction, what exactly is the problem here?? And no I am not the developer nor do I have any relationship with him/her, and yes, I also live in the Manor.
Thompson Place is not in the Manor. Sorry to break the news to you.
I heard every So. of BPR was the Manor ? Not so ?
I am confused by the article, which shows both the current home and proposed home having the same footprint square footage of “2,377 square feet”.
I agree- that came from the plan submitted to the Village. Here is a drawing of the proposed new home at 15 Thompson Pl. http://villageoflarchmont.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/15Thom-A5.pdf
The appeal to the moratorium was denied.
To stop the over building and the subdivisions you do the following:
1. Change the zoning regulation within all districts for example to 1 acre zoning. Some can be larger. You must look at all the districts and increase the requirements of lots size required to build so it’s impossible to subdivide or demolish a house and make it larger than normal.
Make all the properties legal non-conforming.
2. Make sure that any improvements to the existing property and or house can be done with an FAR of something normal. So if you want to put an addition onto the house you can but it has to be controlled by the FAR. Some houses will require “Area variances” but they should be minimal and that is what the zoning board is for.
I believe that Mamaroneck and Larchmont are at capacity. Creating more living space increases everything. From storm water, schools, sanitary sewer waste, open space, the street scape, the coastal scape, parking, electrical capacity, gas capacity, exhaust, cars, people etc.
After getting home from March break, we were surprised to see a tear down on the corner of Soundview and Stuyvesant. Is this only a big deal in the Manor?